STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- It will be the beginning of next week at the earliest before all Consolidated Edison customers on the Island have their power back, the utility said Wednesday, with the job of clearing felled trees and limbs off of power lines among the highest priorities.

In a conference call with reporters, John Miksad, Con Ed's vice president for electrical operations, said that 113,000 customers on the Island were still without electricity.

That's down from 120,000 reported on Tuesday.

"We do have extreme damage on Staten Island," he said, adding that Sandy was "the largest storm" Con Ed has ever dealt with.

He said Con Ed was pulling in repair workers, including crews to clear trees and limbs from overhead wires and roadways, from as far away as California and Canada.

This maps shows the areas of Staten Island still experiencing electrical power outages. The numerals on the icons show the approximate numbers of Con Edison customers affected by each outage, (Con Edison)Staten Island Advance

Con Ed said that 11,000 power lines were down on the Island alone.

"We're still in the early, early stages," he said. "We are pulling our resources in."

Miksad said that how soon the power would come back on here depended on how many extra workers could be brought in.

He said tree removal "was some of the highest-priority work that we're working on. We have thousands of situations like that."

Miksad said the utility would look to first repair infrastructure that would restore power to the most customers at one time.

"We're looking to get the most bang for the buck," he said.

He said that the absence of traffic lights due to power outages was "certainly a concern, certainly an issue," but that there was little Con Ed could do except keep restoring power.

"There's not a special feed to traffic signals," Miksad said. "They will come back on when the neighborhood comes back."

---Follow @siadvance on Twitter. Find out what's open in your neighborhood, or report information to others. Use the Twitter hashtag #siopen